88. What to Say Next by Julie Buxbaum

Listened to audio on Chirp
narrated by Abigail Revasch and Kirby Heyborne
Unabridged audio (9:04)
2017 Delacourte Press
292 pgs.
YA RF
Finished 6/1/2020
Goodreads rating: 4.07 - 14,465 ratings
My rating: 5
Setting: contemporary Mapleview, America

First line/s: "An unprecedented event: Kit Lowell just sat down next to me in the cafeteria.  I always sit alone, and when I say always I don't mean that in the exaggerated vernacular vernacular favored by my classmates."

My comments: This wasn't the lighthearted book that the cover suggests.  It was pretty heavy, actually.  It was the clear, honest voices of the two main characters that grabbed me and pulled at my heart strings.  I could visualize the story unfolding, and felt empathetic and super pissed at the bullying and injustices that David hads endured throughout his life, and the heartbreak that Kit will have to carry with her forever.  I wish I really, truly believed in Karma, because I eally want all the boys depicted in this story to get their due!

Goodreads synopsis:  Two struggling teenagers find an unexpected connection just when they need it most.
          Sometimes a new perspective is all that is needed to make sense of the world.
          KIT: I don’t know why I decide not to sit with Annie and Violet at lunch. It feels like no one here gets what I’m going through. How could they? I don’t even understand.
          DAVID: In the 622 days I’ve attended Mapleview High, Kit Lowell is the first person to sit at my lunch table. I mean, I’ve never once sat with someone until now. “So your dad is dead,” I say to Kit, because this is a fact I’ve recently learned about her.
          When an unlikely friendship is sparked between relatively popular Kit Lowell and socially isolated David Drucker, everyone is surprised, most of all Kit and David. Kit appreciates David’s blunt honesty—in fact, she finds it bizarrely refreshing. David welcomes Kit’s attention and her inquisitive nature. When she asks for his help figuring out the how and why of her dad’s tragic car accident, David is all in. But neither of them can predict what they’ll find. Can their friendship survive the truth?